CFZ PUBLISHING: Here is Animals & Men #57

The world's leading publishers of cryptozoology, forteana and fortean fiction, with over a hundred titles currently in print.

The latest post on the CFZ Publishing Group blog begins as follows:

Here is the latest issue of Animals & Men to read, absolutely free!...

Click here to read the whole article.

CFZ PUBLISHING: Animals & Men #56 out now!

The world's leading publishers of cryptozoology, forteana and fortean fiction, with over a hundred titles currently in print.

The latest post on the CFZ Publishing Group blog begins as follows:

Issue 56 of Animals & Men can now be read, absolutely free, on the main Animals & Men page of this site...

Click here to read the whole article.

CFZ PUBLISHING: Animals & Men #55 out now!

The world's leading publishers of cryptozoology, forteana and fortean fiction, with over a hundred titles currently in print.

The latest post on the CFZ Publishing Group blog begins as follows:

Just in time for Christmas – Issue 55 of Animals & Men can now be read, absolutely free, on the main Animals & Men page...

Click here to read the whole article.

CFZ PUBLISHING: Animals & Men #54 print and Kindle editions

The world's leading publishers of cryptozoology, forteana and fortean fiction, with over a hundred titles currently in print.

The latest post on the CFZ Publishing Group blog begins as follows:

The CFZ’s magazine Animals & Men is always available to read online, but for those who prefer a permanent copy we are also issuing them in print and Kindle edition...

Click here to read the whole article.

CFZ PUBLISHING: Animals & Men #54

The world's leading publishers of cryptozoology, forteana and fortean fiction, with over a hundred titles currently in print.

The latest post on the CFZ Publishing Group blog begins as follows:

Issue 54 of Animals & Men magazine can now be read, absolutely free, on the main Animals & Men page of this site...

Click here to read the whole article.

COMING VERY SOON

WATCHER OF THE SKIES: Cuckoo special

As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... about out of place birds, rare vagrants, and basically all things feathery and Fortean.

Because we live in strange times there are more and more bird stories that come her way so she has now moved onto the main CFZ bloggo with a new column with the same name as her aforementioned ones...

Tracking Cuckoos into Africa
The cuckoo is ‘red-listed’ due to it being one of the UK’s fastest declining migrants. It has always been one of those migrants whose travelling we knew least about. In 2011 the BTO attached satellite-tracking devices to five cuckoos in Norfolk so as to study their migratory habits and hopefully learn more about the cause of their decline. The project is funded by a partnership between the BBC Wildlife Fund, BTO members (through the 2010 Christmas raffle) and Essex & Suffolk Water.
Clement, Martin, Lyster, Kasper and Chris were caught during May and June last year and each of them have their own blog in which their progress to Africa has been monitored. If you have not done so already, you can catch up on this worthwhile and fascinating project by visiting, in the first instance, http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking From there you will be able to link to various sections, including the individual cuckoo blogs.

MANY APOLOGIES

This issue of A&M seems to have been jinxed: every conceivable thing that could go wrong with it has gone wrong with it, and now we are in the embarrassing position of having it on sale on Amazon before we have actually received our copies to send out.

I sincerely hope that they will be dispatched before or soon after Christmas and - I PROMISE - regularising its output is the #1 priority for next year.

Issue 50 is half finished and I know what will be in #51....

On a similar subject, The Journal of Cryptozoology is also late. This is because there are not enough hours in the day to do all the things that we want to do, and not enough people to do them.

Karl Shuker and I are both confident that this too will be underway in the New Year, as will Karl's new book, new books from Nick Redfern, Andrew Gable, Mike Hallowell and others, as well as even more new series and imprints from CFZ Press. 2012 really does look like it will be an exciting year....

AFTER A LONG DELAY, A&M 49 IS FINALLY READY

I don't know why it has taken so long, but the new issue is finally ready. It will be dispatched before Christmas....

AT LAST...

CONTENTS:

Expanded editorial, including:
- Mystery deer
- Disappointing results
- Breeding caecilians
- Mystery cichlid
- All change

Faculty of the CFZ
Contents
Newsfile
Obituary - William Corliss
Obituaries
Nick Redfern's Letter from America - Werewolves and dogmen
Aquatic Monsters Logbook by Oll Lewis
Mystery Cats Diary -
Connecticut puma by Will de Rocco
UK Big Cat Report by Neil Arnold



Watcher of the Skies by Corinna Downes
India expedition report by Richard Freeman
Mystery fish from 1677
Pygmy elephants by Matt Salusbury
Letters to the Editor
Reviews
The Sycophant
About the CFZ
About CFZ Press

A&M 48

We are very sorry for the delay, but stuff got in the way. Animals & Men issue 48 is now at the printer and should be dispatched very soon. For those of you interested in such things, its contents is:

3 Expanded editorial, including:

- Goodbye Biggles
- Big cat DNA confirmed
- Bristol museum’s mystery cat
- Bigfoot Forums
- Orang Pendek DNA?
- India expedition

9 Faculty of the CFZ
12 Contents
13 Newsfile
29 Newsfile Extra, the British Marten
33 Obituary - Jan Williams
34 Obituaries
35 Aquatic Monsters Logbook By Oll Lewis
41 Nick Redfern's Letter from America - The Cardiff Giant
45 Mystery Cats Diary - Suffolk ABC Report by Matt Salusbury
46 Mystery Cats Diary - 2009 Big Cat Report by Neil Arnold
52 CFZ Down Under - The Yowie
57 Watcher of the Skies by Corinna Downes
65 Texas Blue Dog Mystery by Jon Downes
78 Cryptic Super Moles by Max Blake
81 Letters to the Editor
84 Reviews
88 The Sycophant
90 About the CFZ
96 About CFZ Press

THINGS CAN ONLY GET BLAH BLAH BLAH

I am very aware, in fact it could be said that I am painfully aware, that although our book publishing schedule is going ahead at a rate of knots, our publishing schedule for magazines has completely fallen by the wayside. Furthermore, I am only too aware that one of these magazines – Animals & Men – is not only behind schedule, but is what members receive as the main part of their membership.

In the next week or so we will be making a major announcement about the status of the CFZ. I know that sounds ominous but it isn’t. The CFZ will continue – hopefully – for many years to come, and we shall be continuing to publish both our magazines indefinitely. However, we hope that these changes to the CFZ will – in the medium term at least – improve our cash flow, which is the main reason that our magazines have not appeared as regularly as we would like.

The other reason is simply because with the bloggo taking up 50 news stories a week, and occasionally more, it is sometimes difficult to keep up 2 traditional hard copy publications as well. I am only writing this because I want you to be aware that we are aware of the situation, and are doing our best to rectify it. Please bear with us, I would say that things can only get better, but the last person to use that catchphrase was Tony Blair in 1997 and we would like to assure you that no matter how much we cock things up, we ain’t going to do it as disastrously as he did.

Capisce?

DON'T SAY WE NEVER DO ANYTHING NICE FOR YOU

New Horizons, the fourth volume of reprints of Animals & Men, the journal of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, is in production now. It will be published in the next few weeks.

Although the magazines are reproduced largely in fascimile, formatting errors inherent in the original productions (and which have been copied in all reprints to date) have been fixed, so for the first time you can read them the way that they were intended to be read.

The original versions of these five issues (Spring 1998 to summer 1999) were particularly badly formatted, mainly due to the boys of the CFZ not knowing how to use their new PC, and so it is good to have these errors fixed at last.

The volume also includes an essay by Richard Freeman about his early days at the CFZ, and explanatory notes for each volume by Jon Downes, placing them into historical perspective.

It will be £12.50 plus postage and packing. However, if you pre-order here and pay using paypal at the special low price of a tenner, you will receive it - post free - in early March.

Bloody Hell, Jon you must be bonkers to give us such an amazing bargain. Of course, I will take advantage of this fantastic offer. Wow!

THE NEW POSTER GIRL FOR A&M

Let me introduce you to the new Animals & Men poster girl... Ms Emma Naish. According to her papa, Dr D, she is fascinated with the cover of the new issue and won't put it down...

WHAT CORINNA DID NEXT

Just to prove that we are still on the case, here is Corinna preparing the mail-outs for the CFZ Yearbook 2010 and the latest edition of Animals & Men. In the left hand picture she looks as mad as a bagful of cheese, and in the right hand one she is smiling the most insincere smile photographed since Margaret Thatcher was booted out of power (Not that I am comparing her with the Queen Bitch you understand), and she must have been mad to marry me in the first place.

However, the first trenche of magazines were mailed out today, and the yearbooks are all done and will go tomorrow. I should warn you that there will be several trenches of magazine mail-outs so don't be offended or worried if your magazine doesn't arrive in the next couple of days. It will get there soon (honest).

ANIMALS & MEN #47

The new issue of the CFZ journal is imminent and we hope that it will be released in the next few weeks. However, as a taster here is the cover and contents...

3. Editorial
5. Faculty of the CFZ
8. Contents
9. Newsfile
21. Obituaries:
Robert Rines, Stuart Rickard
23. Aquatic monsters logbook
by Oll Lewis
30. Letter from America
By Nick Redfern
34. Mystery cats diary
38 CFZ Australia: Australian big cats
By Ruby Lang
42 Watcher of the skies
By Corinna Downes
47 2009 Expedition report:
Five go mad in Sumatra
By Richard Freeman
57 2010 yearbook
58 Mystery animals of Flemish folklore
part 2 by Neil Arnold
61 Cryptoclearance
62 Never the mind the Aurochs
By Max Blake
67 Gerald Durrells’ strange Corfu cattle
By Jon Downes
70 Weird Weekend 2009
72 Letters to the Editor
75 Book Reviews
78 The Sycophant
79 Marjorie Braund is dead
80 About the CFZ
84 CFZ Press

MIKE HALLOWELL: Cleadon BHM

Greetings earthlings, or whatever. Sorry about the delay in getting this blog completed, but this narcolepsy thing has slowed my work rate down considerably. Still, I've been feeling pretty good this morning and decided to get cracking.

In August 2001 I penned an article for Animals & Men about a mystery big cat sighting in Cleadon Village, which is only a couple of miles from where I live. The case caused an absolute sensation in the local press but for some reason was never to my knowledge picked up by specialist magazines dealing with cryptozoology and other weird stuff – except for Animals & Men, that is. To be honest, given the frequency of the sightings and the multiplicity of witnesses, the fact that no one outside of the Borough of South Tyneside seemed even remotely interested in the Cleadon Big Cat baffled me even more than the critter itself did.

The Cleadon Big Cat was first spotted on January 11th 1999 and continued to make unscheduled appearances for several weeks. I wrote the entire story up in my book Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Northumberland & Tyneside (CFZ Press, 2008) and actively sought out the creature on a number of occasions. Eventually, like most out-of-place cryptids, it simply disappeared and has never reappeared since. And there the story ended, or so I thought. However, over a decade after the Cleadon Big Cat first strutted onto the cryptozoological stage, something has happened to resurrect it. Or maybe not, as it's all a bit confusing.

Several days ago I visited the Marsden Grotto pub in nearby South Shields – which I've also written extensively about (The House That Jack Built, Amberley Publishing, 2008) – and was accompanied by several researchers from Northumberland. Two of them happened to be John and Kelly Triplow, who have singularly impressed me by their professional approach to preternatural research. John told me about a website that contained an intriguing BHM story, not unlike that of the infamous Beast of Bolam Lake, which I actively investigated with a CFZ team in early 2003. What puzzled John – and it certainly puzzled me – was that this BHM sighting allegedly occurred in Cleadon Village in that very same year.

Let me explain why I was so baffled. The Borough of South Tyneside is the smallest Metropolitan Borough in the UK. It consists of six towns and villages, a few farms and…well that's about it actually. It also happens to be one of the hottest spots around for paranormal research, and I've written a good few books, articles and columns dealing with the wacky stuff that seems to happen here more than anywhere else I know. South Tyneside is Spook Central, the Grand Central Station of UFOs and the King's Cross of Weirdness. But it is incredibly small nonetheless, and nothing – and I mean nothing – of paranormal provenance escapes my notice if it occurs within this petite but perfectly formed landscape of Geordie culture. How, then, did the presence of a BHM almost literally on my own doorstep slip past me?

The website drawn to my attention by John is http://www.blogger.com/www.ufoinfo.com and the BHM report in question was posted there on http://www.blogger.com/www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid2003.shtml

According to the website, the unnamed witness stumbled upon a large, bipedal animal. As the sighting occurred at night-time it was impossible for the witness to give a detailed description of the creature, although they did believe that it was covered in thick fur.

The witness was apparently 50 yards or so away from the creature, which they spotted walking adjacent to a nearby line of trees. When the creature saw the witness it became startled and ran into the trees and disappeared. The only other detail in the account was that the first witness saw a second person in the vicinity who was apparently walking a dog.

Firstly, it needs to be pointed out that there is nothing in this report that is inconsistent with the topography of Cleadon Village. There are numerous fields lined with trees that could tentatively serve as the true location of the sighting. However, it seemed more than a little odd to me that this BHM sighting should occur in the same village that had only a short while previously been the setting for the infamous Cleadon Big Cat incident. Two spectacular cryptids in the one village, only a few short years apart? It also seemed odd that the Cleadon BHM should have made its first appearance only months after the Bolam Lake story broke the news. Both stories had a common denominator, and it was I. I'd written both accounts up in my WraithScape column in The Shields Gazette. Further, I'd actively investigated both encounters and lived only a hop, skip and jump away from Cleadon. Was it possible that the two stories had somehow become confused?

My suspicions were further fuelled by the presence of someone walking a dog when the Cleadon BHM was allegedly seen. During my investigation into the Cleadon Big Cat case, the press (The Shields Gazette, January 14, 1999) reported that a woman who had been walking her huge Burmese mountain dog on Cleadon Hills believed that she – or rather her pet – may have been mistaken for the big cat. I was subsequently able to discount this, but the fact that both the Cleadon Big Cat story and the account of the Cleadon BHM included a dog-walker on Cleadon Hills at the time of each sighting again made me wonder if the two stories had been melded together.

And there was another similarity. One of the witnesses in the Cleadon Big Cat case claimed that he'd seen the animal running past his hedge, approximately fifty feet away. If one substitutes the words 'tree line' for 'hedge' and 'fifty yards' for 'fifty feet', the two accounts are unnervingly similar. Nevertheless, if there was even the remotest possibility that the two accounts were different and that the BHM report was essentially genuine, then I knew I'd have to look into it further. I promptly penned an e-mail to the UFOINFO site and asked them if they could provide me with the source of the original story. I haven't had a reply as yet, but as soon as I do I'll keep CFZ acolytes informed.

Until I heard from UFOINFO, I decided to work on the presumption that the story was genuine and investigate it anyway. My first task was to track down any potential witnesses, and so I decided to write up the story in my WraithScape column. The Shields Gazette is one of two provincial papers sold in Cleadon Village, and I knew that if there were any people out there who had witnessed a huge biped stomping around the vicinity then I'd sharp find out about it. My column is due to appear on Thursday 17th December, and if I get a positive result you'll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, if anyone reading this blog knows about this story or has read it elsewhere, please get in touch. Anyway, I must dash – I've a bus to catch to Cleadon Village where a hot date with a hirsute biped awaits me….

WHAT'S GOIN' ON

Life is a little fraught here at the CFZ at the moment, although one would probably not know it from the scenes of cosy domesticity here as I type. I have just come off three weeks of antibiotics and am ravenously hungry and trying to resist the temptation of sending Oll up to the shop to spend large amounts of money that I cannot afford on food that isn't good for me. Greediness and diabetes aren't a good mix, I'm afraid.

We are having computer problems at the moment. Not only has Corinna's blog somehow found itself reset and all her pictures before last week (since 2006) have mysteriously disappeared but the saga of our 'pdf-ing' still rumbles on. I have tried various non-acrobat pdf-making programmes, but the fact that the CFZ Press settings for MS Publisher specifically were set up with Acrobat v.6 in mind, seems to negate me using anything else. So, if anyone has a copy they don't want I would be very grateful.

We are also having problems uploading pdfs to the printers, so Predator Deathmatch (which is, by the way, a smashing book) has been delayed. However, I hope that we shall be able to sort this out today and things will be as they should be again.

Animals & Men #47 is continuing apace and I have every hope that it will be available in time for Christmas. I sincerely hope so, at any rate.

So that is a snapshot of what is happening here at CFZ Central. Graham is in the Isle of Man, Lizzy is asleep on the sofa, Corinna and I are slaving over red-hot computers and Oll is feeding the menagerie. Business as usual I guess.

THIS HOPEFULLY WILL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING...

I was working on the new issue of Animals & Men last night when one of my adopted neices in the CFZ family (I will spare her blushes and not reveal her further) thought the name of our journal sounded dubious. Where had we got it from, she wondered. I hope that this explains everything.

Animals & Men issue 46 is complete

Finally, issue 46 of Animals & Men is completed, and will be on sale, and mailed out to subscribers in the next few weeks. We apologise about the delay, but after years of faffing around we have finally bitten the bullet and changed formats.

After sticking to basically the same format since we started in 1994, and having been completely the same format since 2003, we have changed completely. This new format of Animals & Men has been in the pipeline for a long time, but for various reasons we have always decided to maintain the status quo.

However, after we failed dismally to retrieve any semblance of a relationship with the people who have been leasing us printers for the past decade, after their service got worse and worse, and they became the sort of capitalists that you sincerely hope are going to go belly-up during the current recession. We never wanted to run a print shop anyway. It was not one of my better ideas, and we all let out a resounding huzzah as the hairy handed sons of toil removed the bloody thing out of the CFZ front gates, and we steadfastly refused to take delivery of the excessively expensive replacement that they tried to land us with.

There were a few weeks of unpleasantness during which they tried to insist that we pay the remainder of the lease (in complete contravention of the agreement that we had made at the beginning, they have finally just cancelled it all, and we are free of them.

So, we have decided that rather than get another photocopier and continue with the increasingly tedious business of making, collating, and messing about with the bloody things at home, we have bitten the bullet, and decided to turn the magazine into a proper journal and have it printed professionally by Lightning Source who do all our other books.

The changes in the postal system a few years ago also completely banjaxed our pricing system, and we have been waiting until the next format change to rejig our prices and subscriptions, so this seems to be as good a time as any.

For the past six years, Animals & Men has been 60pp in length. As of this issue we go up to 96pp (not counting the cover). OK, the last fifteen pages are the current CFZ Book List, and a four page blurb about the CFZ for all the thousands of you readers that I hope will start buying the magazine now it is available on Amazon. There is also a full colour pdf version available much cheaper as a download from the increasingly popular CFZ bloggo. So, finally, we have left our roots in the DIY Fanzine culture of the 1980s, and joined the 21st Century.
About bloody time.

The contents page of this issue reads:

4. Subscriptions
5. Editorial
7. Faculty of the CFZ
10. Weird Weekend 2009
11. Newsfile: New and Rediscovered
17. Newsfile: New and Rediscovered
in brief
22. Newsfile: Hoaxes
25. Newsfile Xtra: Tsuchinoko - An undiscovered pit viper?
27. Newsfile Xtra: The Beast of the Bay
31. Obituary: John Michell
32. Aquatic Monsters Log Book
(CFZ Aquatic Monster Study Group)
by Oll Lewis
37. Mystery Cat Diary
(CFZ Mystery Cat Study Group):
Mystery Cats of Michigan
by Raven Meindel
with an introduction
by Nick Redfern
39. Mystery Cat Diary
(CFZ Mystery Cat Study Group):
Cougars in Illinois
by Derek Gebner
40. Letter from America:
Cryptosquad USA
by Nick Redfern
42. Bigfoot Notebook
(CFZ BHM Study Group)
by Paul Vella
46. Unknown animals in the Pet Trade
by Max Blake
51. Mystery Animals of Flemish
Folklore Part One
by Neil Arnold
55. Another Mystery Cat in Hong Kong by Jon Downes and Richard Muirhead
60. The Moa you Know
by Oll Lewis
62. Moas for Sale
66. A whale of a tale
70. CFZ News
72. CFZ People
74. Letters to the Editor
76. Bookshelf
80. The Sycophant
82. Who we are and what we do
86. Books from CFZ Press

SUBSCRIPTIONS

For a 4-issue (one year) subscription:

£16 UK £18 EC
£30 US, Canada, Oz, NZ (airmail)
£35 Rest of World.

METHODS OF PAYMENT

• Subscription rates INCLUDE postage.
• Payment can be made in UK cash, Euro-cheque, or a cheque drawn on a UK bank. Cheques payable to `CFZ Trust`
• Britain is one of the few countries in the world where US dollars do not circulate. If making payment in US$ then please add $14 to cover the currency exchange fee.
• Payment by credit/debit card through our Paypal account (jon@eclipse.co.uk).
• The CFZ Trust is registered as a non profit making organisation with HM Stamp Office. The trustees are J.Downes; R. Freeman & G.Inglis. Charitable status is pending